DailyDirt: Crowdfunding Science!

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Crowdfunding wallet designs and various gadgets may be fun and bring about some innovative products that might not normally get funding, but a lot of popular crowdfunding campaigns are relatively straightforward development projects and shouldn't be all that risky for backers. Crowdfunding actual scientific ventures adds a bit more risk for backers because no one can really say how an experiment will turn out -- unless the experiment has been done before. Adding to the challenge for scientific crowdfunding is the jargon and scientific understanding necessary for a backer to know what a particular project is actually trying to do. If you want to support some science, here are just a few science-related projects to check out. If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
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Filed Under: biohackers, crowdfunding, ebola, nightblindess, open source, pcr, real-time pcr thermocycler, science, telemedicine, trudi, ultrasound robot, vitamin a2
Companies: experiment.com, gofundme, kickstarter, medstartr


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  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 6 Nov 2014 @ 6:02pm

    professional beggars

    People who want to donate money for scientific or medical research need to send their money directly to the research centers actually doing the work -- not to some fundraising powerhouse with a slick marketing campaign and a CEO drawing a seven-figure income.

    That's what makes these "pink ribbon" donation drives such a scam, and it's a shame that so many businesses and consumers alike have been duped into giving them so much money.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Nick Dragojlovic, 20 Nov 2014 @ 9:58pm

      Re: professional beggars

      Not sure if you're talking about foundations or the crowdfunding portals themselves, which do mostly take a commission off of funds raised. If the latter, it's worth pointing out that there are a number of non-profit portals that cater to scientific research projects, such as Consano for medical research, and the many university-hosted portals.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Pixelation, 7 Nov 2014 @ 8:14am

    "Also, the participants in this study reported an increase in nightblindness."

    Well duh, they just forgot to eat lots of carrots with the A2.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Mason Wheeler (profile), 7 Nov 2014 @ 10:29am

    Wow, the vitamin A actually reduced night vision? That just makes it even more deliciously ironic if you know the story behind that whole myth.

    The idea that carrots improve your vision because they have a lot of vitamin A dates back to WW2. British intelligence didn't want the Germans finding out that they had invented radar, so the leaked some (completely made up) information about how they'd had a scientific breakthrough in a completely unrelated field: nutrition. Apparently feeding their RAF pilots lots of carrots gave them superhuman night vision, which was how they managed to do so well at intercepting German planes at night! And the idea just sort of stuck, even after the truth about radar came out.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    RonKaminsky (profile), 10 Nov 2014 @ 11:14am

    Patent-free chemotherapy drug development

    Project Marilyn

    Disclaimer: I donated.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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